Should Children Face Adult Charges?

He was a fun-loving tuba player, an honor student so liked and respected by his teachers that one of them recommended he serve as a peer counselor to troubled students.

But with the squeeze of the trigger on a cheap handgun pointed at a beloved teacher, police say, Nathaniel Brazill went from trusted mentor to accused murderer, launching himself and the rest of Palm Beach County into a growing national debate on juvenile violence.

State Attorney Barry Krischer, an avid foe of juvenile crime, has made it clear he intends to seek a first-degree murder indictment in Friday's killing of language arts teacher Barry Grunow -- a move that would leave no recourse other than to try the 13-year-old Lake Worth boy as an adult.

If convicted, Brazill would spend the rest of his life in prison.

Anti-crime proponents, sick of seemingly endless stories of school shootings, call that justice.

Child advocates, concerned about a country that seems too quick to wash its hands of troubled youth, call it a waste.

In the balance, a lingering debate rages on how best to deal with children charged with adult crimes.

"Do we want to create a criminal or do we want to give that kid a possibility for reform?" asked Nancy Gannon, deputy executive director of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that champions juvenile causes. "All the history here points to a kid who could get back on track."

But Krischer says it's not his responsibility to set wayward children straight. As the county's chief prosecutor, his job is to enforce the laws, and that means seeing that Brazill is tried on the appropriate charge, he said.

If Krischer's office decided to keep Brazill in juvenile court, he would be tried as a delinquent. The stiffest sentence available would be a three-year stay in a maximum-security juvenile detention center, possibly followed by probation.

By 16, he would have no criminal record and be back on the streets with few restrictions -- an unfathomable scenario to Krischer when he thinks of the widow and two fatherless children left behind.

"They want to make a debate out of it," he said on Tuesday after running a gantlet of national news shows to explain his position. "But this is either a first-degree murder or it's not, and clearly in my mind, it's a first-degree murder."

During the past eight years, Krischer has made it no secret that he considers juvenile crime one of the biggest problems confronting society today. To combat it, he has championed tougher juvenile sentences, lobbied for laws that expand prosecutors' ability to try youths as adults and started a "zero tolerance" policy against school violence.

Palm Beach County leads the state in the number of juvenile cases -- from carjacking to robbery to murder -- that are tried in adult court. Florida leads the nation in such transfers.

As the nation increasingly turns its focus from reforming its juveniles to punishing them, Palm Beach County is following a distinct trend.

"This has been going on around the country in one form or another for 20 years," said Mike Dale, a Nova Southeastern University law professor.

The idea, Dale said, is to use tougher sanctions as a deterrent. "But it doesn't work," he said.

By all accounts, Brazill was a popular student among both teachers and students when he was sent home early on the last day of school Friday at Lake Worth Middle for throwing water balloons. No one who knew him, at school or at home, would have guessed he would return hours later with a .25-caliber Raven pistol, according to police.

Just 10 minutes before the last bell of the school year, police said Brazill knocked on the classroom door of Grunow, an instructor Brazill later told police he liked, a teacher who submitted his name for the peer-counseling program.

When Grunow refused to let him in to talk to a girl in the classroom, police said Brazill -- an A and B student with no disciplinary track record -- pulled the gun out of his pocket, raised it and fired a single shot. Grunow, 35 years old and the father of two, died almost instantly.

Grunow's family has contacted the law firm of Montgomery & Larmoyeux, Chris Larmoyeux said on Tuesday. They are talking about filing a worker's compensation claim against the school district and possible lawsuits against the gun's owner and the manufacturer of the Raven semi-automatic.

But it is the criminal case that is attracting national attention.

To some, like West Palm Beach defense attorney Carey Haughwout, the shooting, as tragic as it was, raises questions as to whether Brazill showed premeditation, a must for a first-degree murder conviction.

"Obviously, he had a gun, but did he intend to use it?" Haughwout said. "Premeditation is such a product of the mind, and you've got to determine a 13-year-old's mind."

Haughwout said she is concerned that Krischer appears to have already made up his mind about how Brazill should be charged, before a "real thorough investigation" into the boy's motives and mindset is made.

Krischer, facing a June 15 deadline to indict Brazill before he would have to be released, had hoped to present the case to a newly empaneled grand jury this week. But the Lake Worth Police Department has said it needs more time to complete its investigation.

Krischer says he has no trouble seeing the crime as premeditated.

"Here's a kid who gets sent home from school, gets a gun and comes back and shoots a guy at school," he said. "That's premeditation."

Staff Writer Jon Burstein contributed to this report. Nicole Sterghos Brochu can be reached at nbrochu@sun-sentinel.com or 561-832-2894.